'I have not forgotten; but I had thought, or hoped, that you had done so.'
'Why?'
'I cannot say,' replied the wilful beauty, pouting and yet confessing in her secret heart how handsome he looked, and how winning he was in eye and manner.
'I remember, too,' said he, laughingly, 'the scores of times we used to wander in the garden, or on the heather braes, seeking bees to blob and get the honey out of them; and when on May mornings you used to catch a snail by the horns, and toss it over your left shoulder as an omen of luck in marriage.'
'Allan, such odious and absurd things should be forgotten.'
'We were children, then; and what fun we had when fishing with tinnies in the burn for minnows and pow-wowits under the old brig-stone. Do you remember how I used to climb to get birds' nests for you, and how we wove fairy caps of rushes and bluebells in many a green howe of the Sidlaw Hills?'
'How can you treasure such childish memories, Allan?' she asked, but with momentary softness in her manner.
'Because such were very dear to me when far away in other lands and other scenes, when the Indian sky was like a sheet of heated iron overhead, and the breeze that came from the sandy desert was like the breath of the death-blast; when cattle perished by the empty tanks, the birds sat on the dusty trees with eyes closed and beaks agape, and when strong soldiers died on the line of march, stricken down by sunstroke or sheer exhaustion.'
'Poor Allan!'
'And you are going to the village?' said he, inquiringly, seeing that she manifested no desire to return with him.